Eyes and Gymnastics.

It makes me angry at myself that I have stopped posting as much as I used to.I think I have posted eleven times so far this year. You guys might not care. Maybe you are all, "sheesh! she finally shut up!" but I like to be able to look back and see what I was thinking about and doing. And there's no reason for it! I want to! I think about it! And sure, there's always something else to do but it's not like I don't put in my fair share of time blog-hopping and staring idly at the screen in the evenings.

There was some interest in this, so here's a follow-up. My grandfather had the eye surgery! If you recall, he had his right eye put out (mostly) by a piece of wood when I was a baby. My mom took him to an eye specialist recently because of the cataracts in his 'good' eye. The doctor looked at his bad eye and said, "hey, by the way, you actually have vision in this eye. You just need a new lens!" So they scheduled the surgery to fix the cataracts and scheduled a second surgery for the bad eye for three weeks later. So, imagine! Being able to see with both eyes again after thirty years! (It's okay if I round down, right?)As I mentioned before, as exciting as the concept was to me and everyone else, it would not be out of character for my grandfather to refuse the second surgery, saying something along the lines of, 'eh, I'm not gonna fool with that.' So, we were all assuming that he'd have the cataract one done, and then find something about it that made him not want to have the second one, but then... he didn't! He did it! And guess what? IT WORKED. It takes about three weeks for the full effect to be known, but just a day or two for the majority of the effect. His bad eye is now seeing better than his old good eye. They're thinking it will be about 20/50 instead of 20/20 but, speaking as someone with abysmal vision, much worse than 20/50? I'd take what I have compared to almost nothing at all for thirty years. (He could see blurred shadow outlines of things.) He still has some trouble when he looks down because, according to the doctor, there's dried blood there from the surgery which should go away in a couple weeks. After the vision is settled, he will need a regular old eye exam to get a prescription for glasses that actually work for him.I just cannot even imagine how great that would be. Of course, being him, he's not tremendously vocal about how fantastic it is, but apparently he's doing a lot of pointing out what things say while using his new eye, things he wouldn't have been able to see. He says you don't get too excited about much when you're his age. ;)

Now, something else that I have had on my list to talk about. Evelyn looooves gymnastics, and she is really improving at it, but... well, let's just say that she has a long way to go. And that's okay! I am not dissing my child's athletic skills. I mean, she's three. This is for fun. What I love about it is that she has the drama part down. She stumbles across the balance beam--and may God help you if you slip and call it a balance bar because she will correct you with the force of ten ninjas--with her arms outstreched and her head held so high that I'm surprised she doesn't get nosebleeds, and no matter how many times she totters, when she gets to the end, she dramatically brings her feet together and does a neat little bunny hop off the beam, arms held tightly in place. It's like she instinctively knows that if she keeps the form perfectly (or, as perfectly as a preschooler can keep anything) then people will notice her mistakes a little less. It's adorable.

( some stupid angst about confidence as it relates to gymnastics )